SUSYA: A HISTORY OF LOSS
Source:
Rabbis for Human Rights, 07 November 2013
Palestinian Susya- A History of Expulsion and Loss
The Palestinian village of Susya has existed for hundreds of years, long predating the Jewish Israeli settlement of Susya, which was founded in its neighborhood in 1983. Written records of the existence of a Palestinian community in its location exist from as far back as 1830, and the village is also found on British Mandate maps from 1917. The residents of Khirbet Susya, who today reside in temporary structures north of the Israeli settlement, originally lived in the village of Susya Al-Qadime, located near the ancient synagogue at Susya, where there was a settled village until the 1980s. The Palestinian residents’ ownership of this land is established in law.
First Expulsion
In June 1986, approximately three years after the Israeli settlement of Susya was established in the area, the Palestinian village’s land was expropriated for “public use” and the location was designated as an archeological site. The State’s use of expropriation procedures proves that it recognized that this land was privately owned. Later, the expropriated land was attached to the regional jurisdiction of the Israeli settlement of Susya. Entry to this area is forbidden to Palestinians under the standing military order that forbids Palestinians from entering settlement territory. Village residents were expelled from their homes and their lands, and lost most of their property. The residents were unable to resist the expulsion, which, though conducted through a legal mechanism, did not take the fate of the villagers into account. The expelled village residents settled in caves and tin shacks in an area some 500 meters from their village, in an area today named Rujum al-Hamri, near the settlement Susya. The villagers continued to cultivate their (privately owned) lands. Today, Israeli settlers reside in an illegal outpost located inside the archeological site.
Second Expulsion
The villagers’ proximity to the red-roofed settlement, whose Israeli residents were uninterested in their “new” neighbors, led to their second expulsion. One night in 1990, the Palestinian villagers were loaded onto trucks and taken to an area near Zif Junction – some 15 km north of Susya. Having been expelled from their village and then from their new homes in Rujum, the residents returned to their privately owned agricultural lands and began to live in caves and huts, each family residing on its own agricultural plots from then on. The village’s communal life ceased to exist.
Third Expulsion
The Israeli settlement of Susya has elected to have no perimeter fence. Its residents subscribe to the ideology according to which having no fence means having access to more land. And indeed, in the late 1990s, the isolated farm originally called Magen David Farm and today known as Mitzpe Yair was expanded, and the prosperous agricultural outpost of Dahlia Farm was established. The farm earns an income from a large herd of sheep, which requires a large area of pasturelands to graze. In those years, the settlers of Susya and its outposts seized lands from their Palestinian neighbors and in effect created an unauthorized restricted area to which Palestinians are forbidden from entering. In several instances, Palestinians found on these lands were shot and killed. In July 2001, following the murder of the settler Yair Har-Sinai while he was herding sheep in the area, the residents of Palestinian Susya became the targets of acts of revenge and another expulsion. The expulsion was carried out without warning and was especially violent. Caves were destroyed, wells were blocked, fields were vandalized and animals killed. The expulsion was accompanied by violent arrests and beatings. According to the villagers’ testimony, some of those Israelis present at the expulsion were civilians and not soldiers or police officers – they were apparently settlers familiar with the area who came to supervise the expulsion.
Read more:
http://rhr.org.il/eng/2013/11/susya-a-history-of-loss/
= new reply since forum marked as read